Joe Speiser started his first business when he was still in middle school. The New York-based entrepreneur has had his hands in many industries, from DVD review sites to an ad network that brought in $200m in annual revenue. And that was just in his 20s.
Young people crave stimulus — and the modern world obliges. Mobile phones and the internet provide constant streams of them: bright banner ads, colorful games, bingeable TV shows, infinitely scrolling content feeds. A text message buzzes and dopamine receptors in the brain respond with a quick biological fix.
Shaan Puri: At this point it’s a money printer.
A decade ago, billboards were relics of the past, reserved for Cracker Barrels and gas station exits. Today, they’re one of the fastest-growing ad commodities on the market.
I was in a band until my early 30s. But my real passion in music was composing, and so I started writing film scores. And writing film scores, it’s a very particular kind of discipline where you sort of deconstruct music and you first try to figure out what a film director wants for a movie, which is part of the art of being a film composer.
Americans spend $48B a year on plants. But there are few direct-to-consumer (DTC) retailers that do $10m+ a year in sales.
Brian Scudamore is a man who believes in human connection before technology, so it’s no wonder he founded a company that has a heavy dose of both.